The Truth About Last-Minute Travel – What Every Host Should Know!

If your timing is right, if your market fit is good, in other words, and if you're a host, then your timing is right. I'll tell you that right now. And your market fit is right because people want to travel to these things. And so you're in good shape. If that's the case and you believe in this thing, then, then life will, will maybe throw things at you that will say, I can't do this anymore. Those are, in my opinion, believe this or not, I don't know is what I believe. These are tests. I think, I think if you keep going, if you really believe what you have is right, you will have a successful business. So long as you just keep going.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely if you want my respect you'll better butt direct Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Welcome to the Bruce Lee Podcast. This is the podcast that keep you the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get yourselves more direct bookings. We do a miniseries on this podcast which dives into a software or service that you should know about as a host. Today's episode we are featuring whimsday. We've got Alex from whimsday. He is the CEO, co founder and also the head of growth for the company. And this is something that you need to know about particularly. I mean, it is hopefully going to be all over at some stage. But if you're in the US and you're now a UK listener, you need to listen up to this because this is such an opportunity for you. So welcome along. Alex, thank you for joining me today.

William, what's going on, man? Nice to be here. Thank you very much.

Well, it's nice to see. I, I think we had a brief interaction at the Short Stay Summit last year in, in the uk and I know you get to go to some of the awesome events, so it's great to have you here on the podcast.

Lovely being here. Thank you very much. Mark's a good friend of mine. I, I love what boos Lee does. I wish that the audience could have heard the, the conversation you and I had off air about the art of swearing. Unfortunately, they're going to miss out on that one, but I think we'll get some nuggets on this, so we'll see.

First of all, where are you in the world. And can you give us a bit of information, background? What is whimsday?

Yeah, dude. So I'm in San Francisco actually a little, a little fishing village across the Golden Gate Bridge called Sausalito, California. Beautiful little place my wife and I live. But we are a San Francisco area based, our company is a San Francisco based, Silicon Valley based tech company in the short term rental space. And what we do is really simple. We are an ota. I know that Boostly is a, is a direct booking site. So I'd love to kind of address the sort of OTA versus direct thing at some point. I think that's actually really a cool conversation to have. But we're an ota, but we specialize in something. We help posts and property managers fill their unsold gap nights, weekdays last minute, so expiring inventory, weekdays shoulder season. All the kind of gooky stuff that, that other OTAs have a hard time picking up. That's what we do. And we do it pretty well.

And especially at the moment, I mean as we record this for many hosts in the Northern hemisphere this off season for many hosts, depending on if you offer winter travel or more sort of traditional seasonal travel, summer. But when it comes down to it, there's always those dates that you don't sell as a host that ultimately that's the difference between maximizing your revenue to not maximize it. So any service which helps that we're definitely interested in. And it's funny you should ask about the, the OTA versus direct bookings. And this is something which not many people know, which we do, we say to people, hey, OTAs really serve their purpose, you know, but it's kind of known why to be on the ota, you know, like to do specific things and also for the early, early step in the journey, often it's necessary right at the start there. It's just we don't want people to become too. Some people think it's the only way. And that's where we come in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I think it's right, I mean I, I, so here's, here's an interesting little piece of data. So we're a data driven company, so data is kind of where we live and, and our data is showing us going outside our, our little ecosystem that direct bookings actually help the industry as a whole, including OTAs. And here's the reason why. Reason why is because if you look at kind of the gap between hotels and short term rentals right now, a lot of that gap is Based on hospitality, convenience and those types of things. Right. So because if you're a short term rental, your value is there, right? The space is there, the experience piece, which is very important, particularly to this younger next gen traveler, that's there. So what's not there? Well, a lot of times the sort of the hospitality that you can find in a hotel or even the convenience. So what we find is if a host is focusing on getting a direct booking by upping their hospitality game, that only helps everybody, right? That's. They always mess this one up. But the rising tide with the boats go, all the boats go up, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm pushing that, but you get the idea.

And also just in general, the better your hospitality, the more likely it is that people are going to come back. That can only be good for revenue in general. Can't.

Exactly. So they'll either, they'll either come back to you directly or they'll say, oh, I like this vacation rental experience, I'll do this again. And if you look at how travelers, for the most part, how they choose their house, their lodging, you know, I mean, I think most of the time if they don't have an idea in mind, they go to the ota. So I think the best thing to do from a host perspective is think of the OTA as a traveler acquisition and think of Whimsday's 5% commission as a 5% traveler acquisition tool and then allow yourself the ability to really kind of do what you do best. You know, if I'm, if I've got a place in Norwich, for example, I'm really, I don't, I'm off the charts here, but I have no idea what I'm talking about because I've never been there. But for example, Kromer crab, right? That's something that is specific to Norwich. So what you would want to do, in my opinion as a host there is have some, have some chroma crab in the freezer or something like that. So something that's like a personal localized touch that hotels can't do. So doing those types of things I think are, are a nice way to pull a direct in. And using the OTA to get that traveler in the first place is an essential way to do it. And I think what Wednesday is doing specifically is we are, we're not, we're not fighting against Airbnb and booking and vrbo. That would be dumb. We're complimentary. So you would add us as a complimentary channel because if you look at how things are going Currently with, with booking windows are shrinking if you do not have a specific last minute strategy. If you don't, you're just missing out on a massive chunk of occupation and of occupancy. And so that's kind of the idea.

And so how does that look from I guess a guest point of view? Is it just a, is it a site that they, to what, what does the journey from a guest looks like?

Yeah, it's the same as any other ota. It's an app or a website and you just go in and you find the, and you find the property that you, you go and search for it. It's the exact same way it would work on Airbnb and vrbo. The difference from the traveler's perspective is that they're looking last minute, so they're a little bit more of a spontaneous minded traveler. The host or the, the property manager is going to be adding a last minute discount in order to, to get that filled out. So the person, the traveler that's searching is knowing, hey, I'm, I'm in London and I want to go to Norwich for three days. It's on Monday and I want to go to Norwich on Wednesday for three days. I'm dropping a lot of Norwich on you, aren't it?

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say it's good advertising.

But I want to go to Norwich for three days, I go to Whimsday and, and I find what I want to find and, and that's a booking that probably that host isn't going to get otherwise.

And when it comes down from the host's point of view, obviously, because somebody might look at it and go, well, you know, when I've got last minute, I tend to stick it on my socials or I'll, I'll send it to my email list. Where does whimsday come into that kind of journey for the host? Does it, should they be advertising all the time on Wednesday or is it just those, is it those type of bookings that they should put on there? How, how does feature for them?

Just use us as an extra sort of arrow in your quiver. That's it. So if you have a last minute strategy that's going to socials, by all means continue to do that. If you've got a, a last minute strategy that you shoot out emails to your email list, by all means do that. And then on top of that have an OTA and, and have an OTA that's specializing and filling in your unsold gap nights, weekdays, etc, so it's just again, I think that the best way to think about us is, you know, the best way to think about your, your revenue is what is my distribution strategy look like? And, and it can look like a thousand different ways, but I think to have one that's very specific and very intentional is really, really important. One thing that, that, you know, we, that we've looked at is Generally in the US, people use VRBO for 180 to 90 days out and they use Airbnb for 90 to. Well, there was a gap in 30 and under, so that's why we, we chose to do this. So if you look at being a host or a property manager, and I know vrbo is maybe less, less popular than say booking is in the UK and EU, so let's say that you would use booking for 180 to 90, use Airbnb 90 to 30 and use us for 30 days and under, along with any other tool that you have. And it's just, what it's basically doing is getting you out to as many different travelers as you possibly can. And it's just, it's, you know, if average occupancy right now in the US is 58%, that's the average occupancy. High supply and demand is up, right? Demand is up 10% in the US, I don't know what it is in the UK, I'd have to look at that. But supply is also up about 12% so that causes a bit of an issue. And so Occupancy is a 58%. Get eyeballs, eyeballs in front of your properties and that's the best option for you.

So when it comes down to whimsday, does it just take the available dates or as a host, do I need to send the dates specifically how does that work, kind of the operation?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So there's two different ways. So currently the only way that we work right now is via a PMS connection. So we categorize two different things. Professionally managed and what we call RBOs, individual hosts. So currently what we do is we work with property managers via their pms. They would enable us on their PMS and we're able to consume everything, including their calendar and then we're able to show anything. And if their property has availability within that short term window, it shows up on the wimstay app or website. If it's not available, obviously it just doesn't show up. Now what we are currently doing right now, because 75% of the market is what we call the RBO, the individual host that makes up a large portion of our industry. So we are building right now, which is going to be ready, we think, in the next quarter or so, maybe even less than that. So it should be done by Q1, an RBO portal. So for individual hosts are going to be able to do it, and it's all through iCal. So it's the exact same idea. We'll be able to consume the calendar or through the Airbnb link or whatever it is, be able to consume that calendar. And then we're going to have the option to, to, to show those, those that way. I want to actually double back on something you said, and I think it's just in case this is something that your hosts want to know. I just did a webinar the other day with Jamie Lane from Air DNA, who's the, the head of data for Air DNA, and he mentioned that for the first time in a number of years, the supply numbers are starting to go down. So for your hosts that are a little bit nervous about those supply numbers, they're starting to go down. And we imagine this was going to happen because the boost happened post Covid. We think now that that's gonna, people are starting to kind of figure out they're gonna maybe interest rates are going down, start to sell those homes off and that supply will start to even itself out and hopefully get even below that demand number.

As, as we like to end these, we love to just have a bit of random question or inspiration. Is there a motto, a mantra, or any kind of life lesson that you want to share with. With the people listening?

Ooh, that's a good one. Well, I, I'll say this here's something that I have learned about running a business in a startup. And I'll say a startup, which means basically running any business at all. If you're an individual host and you want to start this going here would be what I would say that I learned. If your timing is right, if your market fit is good, in other words, and if you're a host, then your timing is right. I'll tell you that right now. And your market fit is right because people want to travel to these things. And so you're in good shape. If that's the case and you believe in this thing, then, then life will, will maybe throw things at you that will say, I can't do this anymore. Those are, in my opinion, believe this or not, I don't know is what I believe. These are tests. I think I think if you keep going, if you really believe what you have is right, you will have a successful business. So long as you just keep going. It becomes, after a while it's just, you just gotta keep going. And it's hard, man. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. There's simply no question about it, dude. So I think it's not, I don't know how inspirational it is to say, to say keep going. You know, it's like fall down four times, get up five.

It's a truth bomb, you know, like.

It'S really, really, really is. I mean, I. Again, this is not very inspirational, but at the end of the day, it's a war of attrition. I mean, if you can get through, if you can get through the stuff, the obstacles. I think that only something like, I think 15% of all of all startups get past the third year. A lot of that has to do with people just saying like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. And if that's the case, that's fine. But if you feel it and you're like, I want this and this is something I want, keep going. Seriously, keep going, like something will happen. And so that's, that's probably, I don't know, I'm sure everybody says something like that. But no, no, it's cool.

It's cool. And ultimately this, there's people who need to hear that and certainly I feel inspired by it. So thank you so much, Alex, to for sharing that and for sharing about whimsday. There's people on this podcast who will go and check out whimsday. If you are a host and you know somebody else who would get benefit out of it, go and share this podcast with them. So that's it from myself. Alex, any last things to say?

It was. That was a really good time, man. Thank you very much.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cuz it's so hard on the T is loose leaf licking up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.